Yesterday the miraculous happened: makeup, childcare, and my energy level all aligned, and I took the opportunity to create new tapping videos! About a week after I created the old one, I knew I could do better. Well, I finally have. While not any more comfortable on camera, I am at least more useful this go around.

(Aside: If you’re wondering what on earth this “tapping” thing is, check out my tapping article for a thorough explanation and instructions. But the short version is that it’s an acupressure technique for relieving anxiety, releasing trauma, and processing strong emotions. )

Here’s what I’ve got for you today:

3 Minute Hand Position/Acupressure Points Video

This is a quick way to get a visual for the first time or refresh your memory. You can use it along with the written instructions here.

13 Minute Tap-along-with-Me Video

If you’re new to tapping or feeling particularly distressed, just start the video and tap along with me, step-by-step. You don’t have to do this alone! All you need first is a glass of water and your clearing statement (instructions on this page).

Even though I still feel afraid of publishing videos like these online, two years’ growth has grown my courage. I know more than ever that tapping works, and I’ve gained confidence talking about it even in skeptical and Christian circles. Why not offer a tool that’s yielded only good fruit in my life? More and more I’m aware of the profound suffering around me and within. I hope these videos can be a small drop in the bucket.

On the fence? Wondering what you might tap about? Besides the ideas in my tapping post, here are a few situations I’ve tapped about recently:

Recording videos and putting them on the Internet (!)

My 3yo angrily refusing the food I cook

An email from my nutritionist saying that what I’m doing isn’t enough

Simply processing the day’s emotional ups and downs

Judging myself for feeling rage and hate. Good Christian girls don’t feel like that, do they?

My body looking different after babies/not living up to how I should look

Feeling weak and sick

Annoyed with my husband for _______

Whew. That’s probably more than enough self-disclosure for one day. Care to share what you tap about — or might try tapping about?

TAT Demonstration

First, I recorded a second video, this time of the hand position for the Tapas Acupressure Technique. I linked in my TAT post to a weird YouTube video, but upon reflection, I think there’s room in the world for one a little less . . . how shall I put it?

Ah, Xanax. I still daydream about it sometimes, especially on those days when Baby Bear fights his naps. Back when I was suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depression, I had a tiny prescription for Xanax—just 6 pills at a time—and because I was terrified of becoming addicted, I rationed them carefully.

But they were awesome, and I kind of want some more. Except I don’t have anxiety disorders anymore. Darn?

I share this to emphasize that I know personally what clinical anxiety feels like, so when I say that tapping works for anxiety, I mean it.

I wish I’d had this technique back then to help me! I can think of specific situations when I could have tapped instead of taking prescription drugs.

(Of course, if you have a serious anxiety disorder, please work with a qualified professional. I’m not suggesting you simply stop taking medications! This is a holistic wellness blog, not a radical all-natural-only blog. Include this technique as part of your toolbox and work toward correcting underlying causes from a long-term, whole-person perspective.)

What Is Tapping?

Like the TAT, it’s an emotional acupressure technique used to calm and process emotions. You use your fingers to tap or rub acupuncture points on your body while repeating a clearing statement. It can help relieve generalized anxiety or a feeling of tension, phobias, and strong emotions linked to specific events (e.g., your newborn baby is crying nonstop or you just found out your co-worker got promoted into the position you wanted).

Wikipedia may deem it pseudoscience, but many of us would beg to differ. I don’t pretend to know exactly why it works. I just know that it does. We’re talking huge before-and-after differences 90% of the time.

And I speak as someone who majored in psychology and was extremely skeptical of things like this. I also spent years in psychotherapy for trauma, so when Wikipedia says that the positive results from tapping are “likely due to well recognized conventional psychological techniques often used with the tapping,” I laugh a little inside. As if.

Everywhere these days I see people using food as medicine. Whether it’s the paleo autoimmune protocol, an anti-inflammatory diet, or the GAPS diet, the healing power of food is in the spotlight.

I think this is fantastic!

I would guess that most people will see 90% of their health problems disappear with a return to real, nourishing food and healthy movement. You can read these kinds of stories all over the blogosphere–recovery from autism, healing PCOS, eliminating asthma, reversing Type II diabetes. They’re truly inspirational.

But then there are the rest of us.

Desperate to resolve my own health problems, which ranged from chronic infections to debilitating allergies to extreme fatigue, I worked for several years with doctor after doctor, naturopath after naturopath, book after book, blog after blog, looking for the perfect combination of diet and supplements and cleanses to heal my body.

I did candida diets ad nauseam, the Body Ecology Diet, the nearly-vegan mostly-raw Eat to Live diet, the Blood Type Diet, the paleo diet, and all manner of elimination diets to find the source of my chronic inflammation or avoid my food “triggers.”

My old health blog was a bit of a journal of these experiments. I talked a lot about the latest crazy eating plan I was on in my quest for healing.

And you know what? I got some relief. I really did. Being gluten-free, dairy-free, and grain-free helped.

Then again, I was living gluten-free, dairy-free, and grain-free . . . with no end in sight. This would be my life-long prescription, and while I was better than before, I was nowhere near vibrantly well.

Why Isn’t Nutrition Always Enough?

You might think of it like this. Does your car need the right fuel to run? Absolutely! If your car doesn’t start, what’s the first thing you should check? The gas tank, of course . . . and, uh, maybe the oil and other important fluids?

(Can you tell yet that I know almost nothing about cars? What was I thinking with this analogy!)

But if you’re putting generally the right stuff into your car and it’s still not running, isn’t it time to fix the car instead of endlessly tweaking the exact composition of your fuel?

[I’ve received questions about the appropriateness of energy medicine and techniques for Christians, and while I look forward to addressing these concerns in a dedicated series (after all, there’s a lot to think about with this topic!), for now, I’m just forging ahead with sharing what works for me.]

A Different Approach to Healing Emotions

Already in this Healing for Life series, I’ve mentioned emotional healing and “healing tools” as big parts of my personal journey. When I say I believe in holistic health, I mean that. I think it’s misguided to address only the body when it comes to physical illness, and equally misguided to focus only on the mind when dealing with emotions, stress, or depression. (Actually, I’m even more holistic than that, but we’ll get to that later!) The Tapas Acupressure Technique (TAT) addresses both mind and body. You might think of the TAT as a kind of do-it-yourself emotional acupuncture.

We usually think of our emotions as intellectual experiences, but they are physical as well. Every emotion has corresponding physiological (chemical) processes. As I understand it, the idea behind something like the TAT is that you can help the body process the emotions, leaving your conscious experience freer.

What I can say with most confidence, though, is simply that this works for me. It’s truly changed my life.

However it works, the TAT helps me not only relieve the experience of strong emotions like anxiety, anger, or abandonment, but also helps uncover and heal some of what’s underneath the emotions. It’s amazing. I always invite God into the process and ask for His healing, and He has been very faithful to show me where I am unfaithful and to guide me back to His truth.

You can do the TAT about an emotion that’s bothering you, or about an entire situation. One thing I love about this technique is that I don’t have to be able to articulate in words what’s wrong or how I feel. Sometimes I just feel anxious or blah and have no idea what’s going on, but I’m tired of feeling that way. That’s when I do a TAT. Or, I’ll do one when I know or suspect that there’s an area of my life that needs healing, as you’ll see below.